i66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



worlds are profoundly diJfferent from those which obtained three cen- 

 turies ago. Leaving aside the existence of a great and characteris- 

 tically modern literature, of modern painting, and, especially of modern 

 music, there is one feature of the present state of the civilized world 

 which separates it more widely from the Renascence than the Renas- 

 cence was separated from the middle ages. This distinctive charac- 

 ter of our own times lies in the vast and constantly increasing part 

 which is played by Natural Knowledge. Not only is our daily life 

 shaped by it, not only does the prosperity of millions of men depend 

 upon it, but our whole theory of life has long been influenced, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, by the general concej^tions of the universe 

 which have been forced upon us by physical science. In fact, the 

 most elementary acquaintance with the results of scientific investiga- 

 tion shows us that they offer a broad and striking contradiction to the 

 oj)inions so implicitly credited and taught in the middle ages. 



The notions of the beginning and the end of the world entertained 

 by our forefathers are no longer credible. It is very certain that the 

 earth is not the chief body in the material universe, and that the 

 world is not subordinated to man's use. It is even more certain that 

 nature is the expression of a definite order with which nothing inter- 

 feres, and that the chief business of mankind is to learn that order and 

 govern themselves accordingly. Moreover, this scientific " criticism of 

 life " presents itself to us with different credentials from any other. 

 It appeals not to authority, nor to what anybody may have thought or 

 said, but to nature. It admits that all our interpretations of natural 

 fact are more or less imperfect and symbolic, and bids the learner seek 

 for truth not among words but among things. It warns us that the 

 assertion which outstrips evidence is not only a blunder but a crime. 



The purely classical education advocated by the representatives of 

 the Humanists in our day gives no inkling of all this. A man may be 

 a better scholar than Erasmus, and know no more of the chief causes 

 of the present intellectual fermentation than Erasmus did. Scholarly 

 and pious persons, worthy of all respect, favor us with allocutions 

 upon the sadness of the antagonism of Science to their mediaeval way 

 of thinking, which betray an ignorance of the first principles of scien- 

 tific investigation, an incapacity for understanding what a man of sci- 

 ence means by veracity, and an unconsciousness of the weight of estab- 

 lished scientific truths, which is almost comical. 



There is no great force in the tu quoque argument, or else the ad- 

 vocates of scientific education might fairly enough retort upon the 

 modern Humanists that they may be learned specialists, but that they 

 possess no such sound foundation for a criticism of life as deserves the 

 name of culture. And, indeed, if we were disposed to be cruel we 

 might urge that the Humanists have brought this reproach i;pon them- 

 selves, not because they are too full of the spirit of the ancient Greek, 

 but because they lack it. 



